


Ma'at

by Sigridhr



Category: Amelia Peabody - Elizabeth Peters
Genre: Gen, Vignette series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigridhr/pseuds/Sigridhr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five quiet moments between Amelia and Ramses throughout the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ma'at

**Author's Note:**

> Barbara Mertz (who wrote under the pen-name Elizabeth Peters), the author of the Amelia Peabody series, passed away earlier this month. 
> 
> I find it hard to put into words just how much I love these books. I read them as a teenager, and re-read them again and again (and still do), and I think it's fair to say that they have had a profound effect on who I am, and who I would like to be. This series is what confirmed my interest in archaeology and started me on my current career, what fostered my interest in feminism and a lot of my interest in the history of the Edwardian and Victorian periods, it's influenced my writing, my sense of humour, and my understanding of love. 
> 
> Amelia in the books manages to both outwardly bolster and embody aspects of Imperialist Britain, including its racism and classism, while the novels themselves critique these brilliantly (exceptionally brilliantly, given the novels are mostly first-person). She's forced to confront each of these prejudices in turn, to varying degrees of success, and the novels manage to capture the romanticism of the period without doing so through rose-coloured glasses. And they are above all, absolutely hilarious books, with one of the most loveable literary families I have ever read. 
> 
> Amelia and Emerson are probably my template for a loving relationship – because one of the most beautiful and most attractive things about these books is the humanness of the characters, who manage to be both loving and jealous, contradictory, hypocritical and loveable, who age and have their relationships age with them, all while remaining beautifully in love in a way I can't help but envy. 
> 
> I wanted to write something as a way of acknowledging just how much these stories have meant to me.

> Nothing evil can befall me in this land, in this broad hall of the Two Goddesses of What is Right, because I know the names of the gods who dwell in it.
> 
> – Extract from _The Book of the Dead_ , Spell 125

 

* * *

**i. Summer, 1889**

I have never once failed at a task that I have fully put my mind to, and I have no doubt that I will, in time, succeed at this one. However, in the pages of my private journal I will confess that I have also never felt so hopelessly inadequate and unsuited to a task as motherhood.

The child – _my_ child – could not have seemed more foreign to me if I had simply discovered him in the woods and brought him home with me (and, to judge by the state of his clothing after a mere hour in the nursery, I suspected his appearance might not have been entirely dissimilar, either).

I am not, I confess, a maternal woman. Children are fundamentally uninteresting creatures, as they are incapable of intelligent conversation and tend (as mine seemed particularly determined to demonstrate) to have an objectionable predilection for filth. I had hoped, however, that some semblance of maternal feeling might arise after prolonged exposure, especially since it was becoming entirely evident that Emerson was not going to be parted from him.

My dear Evelyn was excellent with children, falling into the role of mother with an ease that I was utterly unable to duplicate. She sat patiently as the babbled at her and ruined her beautiful frocks with sticky fingers, and held them as if they were an extension of her own body, resting them naturally against their hip. When I carried Ramses (at his request) he felt awkward in my arms, and I was glad to put him down. He was glad too, I suspect. He has not asked to be carried again.

Evelyn has told me, in her kindly way, that it will come in time, but I confess, privately, that when I look upon my son I find myself entirely at a loss for what to do. Emerson dotes upon the conniving creature, pulling out books on mummies and sitting the child up while he looks at the books, his face screwed up in an alarming expression of concentration for one so young.

Emerson is a grown man – the greatest of men – and yet he babbles like an absolute buffoon when confronted with his progeny. I have no such inclinations. Nor any inclinations towards the child at all. And I was rather put out with him for throwing aside our lives, our happiness and our excavations in Egypt to sit at home and speak nonsense to a child who could barely yet walk.

I felt a grim foreboding as I watched my son grab hold of my husband’s sleeve and pull himself to his feet, and then, with dark brows furrowed in an expression I recognized as the one Emerson wore in his most obstinate moods, took a step forward, and then promptly fell straight on his face. He hauled himself up again almost immediately, repeating the action over and over until he could toddle between Emerson and I reliably.

Emerson beamed at me. The child clung to my skirts and said, “mama.”

I resigned myself to having a stern talk with the nursery maid about properly watching him. A mobile Ramses boded ill for anything kept in low cupboards. 

I could see nothing of myself in him. It was as if everyone else in the house were seeing an entirely different creature than I. Almost as if he were not my child at all. But I knew, of course, dear Reader, that such a thought was utter nonsense. I knew Ramses was mine. I was, after all, present at the time.

I found myself in the nursery later that day, as Emerson scowled formidably over his most recent manuscript of his History of Egypt and cursed at anything that moved. As a rule, I tended to avoid the nursery, save for the appointed hour I spent there after tea, and the few occasions where Evelyn encouraged me to come along with her.

The room was quiet. I could see the small form of my son, his small head of curly black hair sticking out above white sheets, lit by the faint light from the hallway. I am uncertain why I decided to enter, but I found myself standing beside his cot, staring down at the sleeping body of my child.

In slumber, he seemed deceptively innocuous, with sable curls and small hands, like one of Botticelli’s angels. He rolled over in his sleep, twisting his nightclothes and sheets, and pressing one half-closed hand to his cheek. Then, he opened his eyes and looked directly at me.

There was something disconcerting about his unblinking stare, and I felt an inexplicable sense of chagrin at having been caught watching him.

“Go back to sleep,” I said at once.

The child merely continued to look at me, his dark eyes wide and fixed on my face. I reached over into his cot and smoothed out the sheets. Then, to my surprise, he reached out and grabbed a hold of my hand in a surprisingly firm grip, wrapping his small fingers around one of my own.

He stared at our joined hands in the same concentrated, unblinking way he had looked at me, and I was temporarily struck dumb by his actions. He turned my hand over in his, examining it thoroughly as I had seen Emerson examine potsherds, and then carefully placed his own against my palm, comparing the lengths of our fingers.

I have never been accused of being a sentimental woman, but I defy anyone to have been unmoved in my position. My son’s fingers barely reached the top of my palm, and I was struck with an overwhelming sense of how very small, and yet how very intelligent he was.

Emerson had given up Egypt for this boy, and I had – in moments I am not so proud of – resented him for it. I had expected a life of dull drudgery, of teaching and universities, and dismal rainy winters. Instead, I saw now my future spreading out before me, in the hands of this unpredictable child.

I stepped back, taking my hand away from his own, and he continued to watch me. Then, with a slow, indulgent smile, he rolled onto his side and curled up, going back to sleep.

I did not sleep that night. I could still feel his hand pressed against my own.

 

 

**ii. Summer 1899**

 

Ramses was not often ill. In fact, I had sometimes myself suspected him of possessing a somewhat super-human constitution, since I had seen all manner of foul-looking things pass unscathed through his digestive tract. However, like all men, he was absolutely loathsome when he was ill.

He looked as surly as a spoilt Pasha bundled up in flannels, and he pulled the sheet up to his chin with a disgruntled air when I entered the room. I placed the bottle of camphor oil down on the nightstand, and pulled the sheets back down.

“That is not necessary, mother,” said Ramses, his voice hoarse and undoubtedly painful.

I did not bother to dignify his blatantly spurious remark with a response, and simply began rubbing the camphor oil into his chest. He gave a juvenile squawk and sat up, brushing my hands away and began to do it himself. I left him to it. I am not above giving children their little moments of independence.

Ramses began to cough, and his entire body shook with the force of it. It was an awful, deep cough that set my teeth on edge. Ramses had the constitution of an ox, and I very much doubted anything so insignificant as illness would succeed where armed bandits and cave-ins had failed, but I admit that the sight of him struggling to draw in breath aroused a similar sensation in me.

“Perhaps you should rest,” I said.

“I have rested,” my son replied sullenly, falling back against his pillows. “I would like a book.”

“Perhaps your sister will read to you.”  

“Nefret is _not_ my sister,” Ramses insisted obdurately. His cheeks were flushed a dark red from his cough, but I fancied I saw them go darker still.

“Either way, she is perfectly capable of reading,” I replied, absently brushing some of Ramses’ curls off his face.

“I would prefer,” Ramses said quietly, looking steadily towards the foot of the bed, “to read by myself.”

“Ramses,” I said, looking firmly at him. “You are not still upset that her actions were more precipitate, and a good deal more effective, than your own during the attempt to kidnap you? The assumption that male persons are obligated to leap to the defence of women entirely capable of defending themselves, and that it should be shameful to be defended by a woman, is one I absolutely will not support, Ramses. Nefret is an excellent shot with a bow and arrow, and you should be grateful for her intervention.”

Ramses gave me a scandalized look, though it was somewhat diminished by the way he had tugged the bed sheets back up to his chin like a churlish old maid. “I am disappointed, mama, that you should think me capable of holding a grudge against Nefret for her most admirable behaviour. I confess that it did take me somewhat by surprise at the time, and that I wish that my own actions had been equally as precipitate and effective – as you say – but I am most certainly not upset by her behaviour. After living with you and papa, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the capabilities of women, as I am too often reminded of them through your actions. And of course, through those of Nefret –“

He broke off coughing, and I placed a hand on his back to support him. “Oh, do constrain your loquacity, Ramses. At this rate you will certainly asphyxiate beneath a heap of endless sub clauses. You must be brief, direct and to the point, and I have always told you. Your tendency towards endless expostulation and expression of anecdotal opinion are quite tiresome.”

“I am sorry, mother,” he said. “I merely wished to impress upon you the sincerity of my complaint, and to inform you, with the utmost respect, of course, that you were much mistaken in your judgement.”

“Good,” I said, as soon as I could get a word in since I had no interest in spending the rest of my day listening to Ramses talk. “Then I will send Nefret in.”

Ramses gave me a formidable scowl, but I was well accustomed to ignoring those by now.

“I do not wish her to read to me,” Ramses said, so sharply that it set him off on another fit of coughing.

“Why not?” I asked.

Ramses seemed to consider his answer very carefully. “She keeps rubbing camphor oil on me.”

I took in Ramses’ flushed face, and his earlier insistence to be allowed to do it himself, and then thought of the determined expression on Nefret’s face when she’d brought up tea and lemon earlier this morning, and decided to take pity on my son.

“Perhaps,” I said, slowly. “I could read to you for a short while.”

“Thank you, mama,” said Ramses, so quietly I very nearly missed it.

The _Principles of Transitive Verb Constructions in Middle Egyptian Texts_ he requested I read was extremely dull. However, he was asleep by the time I left, so, in my opinion, it served its purpose.

 

 

**iii. Spring 1904**

I am a firm believer in British unflappability and perseverance in the face of difficulty. As a rule, I am not overly fond of undue displays of unnecessary emotion. My son, however, sometimes takes these admirable traits to an unreasonable extent.

I have been forced, over the last year, to re-evaluate my opinion of my son. There are a great many things Ramses does that I do not condone, and undoubtedly a great many others that I would not condone if I were aware of them. However, it was becoming increasingly impossible to ignore the fact that my son was fast approaching adulthood, and that I hadn’t the least idea what he was up to.

Emerson believes that I am overly suspicious of Ramses’ motives. How anyone could live nearly seventeen years in Ramses’ company and not be suspicious of his motives is entirely beyond _me_ , but I do not engage in the contrary practice of ignoring reality that seems to sometimes be endemic of the male condition. Nevertheless, my concern for Ramses at present was due more to his increasingly recalcitrant nature, than any desire to pry.

There had been times when I would have cheerfully removed my own arm to get Ramses to cease speaking. However, he had grown into an unusually taciturn teenager, and there were moments where I perversely missed his previous tendencies to air his thoughts.

I knocked on his door. I believe children, like everyone else, are entitled to privacy.

There was a sound suspiciously like objects being shoved in drawers, before Ramses said, “come in.”

I of course did not mention it, but I confess I did wonder what would have been worth tucking away, given every surface of the room was littered with paper or discarded items of clothing.

“Really, Ramses,” I said, picking up a shirt from the floor. “This one is new.”

Ramses took it from my hand, and then seemed to glance around the room in confusion as if he was not quite certain where it belonged.

“Never mind, dear,” I said.

Ramses gave me a sheepish look, and then cleared off space on the bed for me to have a seat.

“Is there something I can help you with, mother?” Ramses asked, expectantly.

I sat down on the bed, with my back straight and my hands folded in my lap, and, since I do not believe in beating about the bush, said, “I wish to discuss what happened with Colonel Bellingham in the tomb.”

The strongest visible reaction this elicited from Ramses was a blink, but his posture shifted a rigid upright attention, and I thought the corners of his lips had tightened a fraction. He regarded me warily, but said nothing.

“Your father is of the opinion that no more should be said on the matter. I am not,” I continued. “What I wish to know is: are you all right?”

Ramses’ brow furrowed, but my question seemed to take him by surprise. He regarded me in silence for a moment, and then said, “yes.”

“I do not condone violence, as you know, but I recognize its necessity under certain circumstances.” I studied the face of my son carefully, trying to keep the memory of the sickening sound of bone against hard rock out of my mind. I suspected, by the way he had clenched his hands into fists, that he was doing the same. “These were certainly circumstances that warranted your actions. I suspect you did not mean to kill him –“

Ramses swore.

“I am grateful nonetheless, and think no less of you for it – or for regretting it.”

He had covered his face with one shaking hand, and he let it fall to his side, staring at the floor in front of him. “You do not pull punches,” he said, quietly.

“You take far too much on yourself, Ramses,” I said with a sigh. “I am a firm believer in maintaining true British composure, but I would think far less of a man who could kill without a second thought.”

I saw Ramses visibly flinch at that. I stood, brushing out my skirts. “Clean your room,” I said. “And don’t leave your hat on the floor.”

“Mother,” said Ramses, as I turned towards the door. I stopped, and looked back. He was staring at the empty space on the bed where I had been sitting. “Thank you,” he said.

“Of course, my dear,” I replied, and shut the door quietly on my way out.

 

 

**iv. Spring 1914**

 

I was beginning to have doubts about the priest.

He was, unfortunately, the only one available on such short notice. Emerson was wandering around alternately grinning and attempting not to cry – men can be such irritatingly sentimental creatures at times – and was as a consequence of no use whatsoever. However, by the third time the priest had stumbled over the vows, (and Emerson had impolitely suggested that he “just skip to the good bit”), I had simply made up my mind to be resigned that God would understand what we meant, and the necessity of holding the ceremony under such an incompetent minister.

Nefret looked utterly radiant, her cheeks fixed in a smile and her blue eyes shining with joy. My son… Ramses still bore the visible marks of Percy’s handiwork. There were dark bruises on his face, and he had a slight limp still when he walked. David could not walk at all yet, and had been carried into a chair behind Ramses.

But Ramses was smiling – brighter than I think I had ever seen him before. And the incompetence of the priest, the ramshackle surroundings and the talk that was already spreading throughout Cairo at the news of Nefret’s second hurried marriage became utterly meaningless to me. To my great surprise, I found myself on the edge of tears as well.

There was no band, but Selim and Daoud, and many of their cousins, began to sing, and Ramses offered me his arm.

“Are you crying, mother?” he asked in surprise.

“I believe it is the done thing,” I replied, pulling my handkerchief out of my pocket. Ramses had been searching, without luck, for his.

He chuckled lightly, and squeezed my hand gently in his.

“I have a considerable quantity of advice for you,” I said.

“I do not doubt it,” he replied, his expression deliberately and infuriatingly inscrutable.

“The majority of it is essentially ‘stay out of trouble’. I will give it to Nefret. I know you will simply ignore it.”

Amusement coloured his tone as he replied. “Nefret is hardly better than I at staying out of trouble.”

“No, but my hope is that the two of you will spend so much time keeping each other out of trouble, you won’t have time for trouble yourselves.” I gave him a smile and squeezed his shoulder. “It has worked terribly with your father, but I confess I have not quite lost all hope for you.”

“And the rest of it?” Ramses asked.

I placed a hand on his cheek and looked up at him. “Just be happy, my dear.”

His gaze flicked over to where Nefret was standing, watching us, and he looked back at me. “Always,” he said.

 

 

**v. Christmas 1922**

 

“I do not understand how it is possible for a child to consume enough cake to make herself ill in the span of five seconds,” said Ramses, sitting down next to me with a sigh.

“Charla has gone to bed, I take it?”

“Reluctantly,” replied my son, with a visible wince.

“I expect it will be forgotten by morning,” I replied, giving his knee a kindly pat. He was looking at me with the most unusual fond expression. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Merely that I have renewed and deepened sympathy for you and father now that I have children of my own.”

I smiled at him. “I do not recall you ever eating enough cake to make yourself sick.”

“I ate a good deal worse,” said Ramses feelingly.

“You turned out all right in the end.” I finished the last of my whisky and soda and placed it back on the table. “Despite a considerable quantity of dubious sweetmeats.”

Ramses chuckled, and then picked up my glass. “Another?” he asked.

“No, I believe I shall head off to bed.”

He paused for a moment, glass in hand, and then bent down and pressed a kiss to my temple. “Good night, mother.”

I frowned up at him. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Not nearly enough,” he replied, and then gave me his hand and helped me to my feet.

“Good night, my dear,” I said softly, and he gave me one of his rare smiles in return.

As I made my way through the room, I caught sight of him wrapping his arm around Nefret’s waist as she rested her head on his shoulder, and I felt a warm rush of affection for them both.

Emerson was standing in the doorway, and he wrapped me in his arms, resting his chin on the top of my head. “A good year, eh, Peabody?” he said fondly.

“All our years are good years, Emerson,” I replied.

His reply made it difficult to continue the conversation, and I allowed him to lead me upstairs, away from the lights and the children.

**Author's Note:**

> A quick note on chronology -  
> Summer 1889 falls between _Crocodile on the Sandbank_ and _Curse of the Pharaohs_
> 
> Summer 1899 falls just after _The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog_. 
> 
> Spring 1904 falls at the end of _Seeing a Large Cat_.
> 
> Spring 1914 falls at the end of _He Shall Thunder in the Sky_
> 
> And Christmas 1922 falls during _Tomb of the Golden Bird_.


End file.
